


cause i can't help it if you look like an angel

by makapedia



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-16
Updated: 2015-03-16
Packaged: 2018-03-18 03:01:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3553583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/makapedia/pseuds/makapedia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s a little hopeless and hung up on the girl he dated and lost in high school.</p>
            </blockquote>





	cause i can't help it if you look like an angel

He’s nursing his second drink when she finally notices him.

She looks just like she did when she was in high school but she also doesn’t; her eyes are just as green and just as bright, her cheeks are just as full and pink and her hair is just as fair, just as curiously ashy-blonde as he remembered it, but she’s also faintly taller, her face has narrowed out, she’s filled out. She fits her pink bridesmaid dress sinfully, and it would take a fool not to notice.

He’s a fool for noticing it even back in high school and still fucking it up, but that’s another drink for another time, and he’s supposed to be celebrating his best friend’s wedding, so he sips his drink and raises his brows at her.

Predictably, her face goes lax. She looses all pretense of the tinkling laugh he’d heard only moments before and she’s eerily shocked for a moment before she collects herself and her brows bunch together and she’s got this wrinkle there that he wants to smooth out with his thumb.

She’s too pretty to be that angry. She’s too pretty  _when_  she’s angry. She’s just too pretty all of the time and it’s going to be his downfall. 

And then there’s a hush among the gaggle of bridesmaids that she’d been laughing with only moments prior and then suddenly he’s being ogled openly by Liz and Patty Thompson, and it’s a little unnerving.

They look radiant. They look no less beautiful than Maka does, what with Liz’s honeyed hair all tied up in an elegant braid and Patty’s crimped blonde in loose ringlets, but he’s long accepted that he has a thing for tiny, skinny blondes that spend all their time reading and nagging him, so his gaze doesn’t linger too long. He’s glued to Maka and she knows it, because she keeps sending him seething glares and tight-lipped frowns and he knows he’s in for it.

The cake, he decides, is too sweet for his taste, but it’s keeping him from walking over and saying something to her, so he keeps shoveling it in and waiting for Black Star to be free, because he’s the reason why Soul even bothered crashing the damn wedding. 

His bride might not have invited him out of respect for her maid of honor, but Soul knew better than to skip out on Black Star’s wedding, of all things; he valued the current arrangement of his face. Maka had liked his face once. She’d liked brushing her thumbs over his jaw and whispering against his mouth, and it was knowing that he had been her preference once that kept him from shaving his head and getting another three tattoos down his arm.

He’s a little hopeless and hung up on the girl he dated and lost in high school. He’s a lot pathetic and sad, and every date he’s been on since has annoyed him. 

He tries not to look at her when she sinks into the chair next to him, but he still notices how tense her shoulders are and how tightly her mouth is pulled into a line. He knows that look; it’s the same look she used to wear when her father was around, and his stomach sinks. She’s equating him to her cheating, philandering father and that’s not who he is, that’s not who he ever was, and some part of their fight seem a lot clearer now. Did she think he cheated on her? Was that it?

She clears her throat and he glances up from his fork full of strawberry cake. She’s wearing mascara. Her lashes were never that dark before — she’s blonde, very blonde.

"Hey, Maka."

"What are you doing here?"

He tries not to take offense at her clipped, professional tone. He sips at his drink and tries not to focus on the tremor in his hands and the way his knee is bouncing; his nerves are going haywire and it shouldn’t surprise him, because Maka has always had this effect over him. She can read him like an open book but also possesses the ability to learn him, try to understand him, and he hasn’t let anybody do that since her.

He slides a glance back her way. Her fists are balled up on the table, tiny fingers so cute and pink in ways that make him want to kiss each digit. He doesn’t, for obvious reasons.

"Well, I think I’m here celebrating  _our_ friend’s wedding. The one I wasn’t invited too,” he raises his brows at her and does not miss the twitch of her lips. “Funny, considering Black Star is my best friend.”

"And Tsubaki is mine," she breathes, and he nods because yes, he knows that. 

He absolutely knows why he was not invited, but he wants to hear her say it. He wants her to admit her own faults, wants her to come clean about her grudge and own up to it. Because she’s not perfect, even if he thinks she is, and she needs to understand that people make mistakes.

Blonde brows furrow further and he takes another bite of cake. The frosting, he decides, is what’s making the dessert too sweet. He scrapes a red flower off and dumps it onto a napkin. Maka clicks her tongue.

"Is this you trying to chase me off?" he drawls. "Because I’m not going until I at least get to congratulate Black Star." 

She purses his lips. He tries not to be too obvious while he stares at her mouth, because he misses her voice and the way she laughs, but the primal part of him also misses her tongue. He feels gross and looks back at his plate. 

"… I feel angry right now, and I don’t want to ruin their wedding," she settles for after a long moment of searching, and he can’t help but grin; she’s so well behaved for someone who threw his stereo out her window and smashed all the CDs he made for her. 

He twirls his fork in piles of frosting. “Sucks,” he says simply. “Can’t always get what you want.”

Her entire being tightens and tenses. She leans forward and he’s counting the shades of green in her eyes instead of fearing for his life. “Soul,” she growls, and he’s definitely simultaneously turned on and horrified, and he can’t keep the sardonic grin off of his face. “You shouldn’t be here. Near me. I’m angry at you.”

"And why is that, anyway? What did I do?"

There’s another three shades in her eyes and he’s enthralled. Green is his favorite and least favorite color. It haunts his dreams and nightmares alike. 

"Does Blair ring any bells? Does Blair at  _PROM_ ring any bells?” she hisses, and she’s leaning so close to him that he can smell her shampoo, so simple and clean and faintly vanilla that it sets his brain into overdrive. 

He doesn’t remember Blair at prom, because Blair was a year older than them and Blair was sleeping with his brother. He remembers Maka in her red dress, Maka with bare feet and standing on his shoes as he twirled her around in the corner of the gym, Maka with her arms around him and crooning his name. He remembers the smell of her shampoo, too. And he remembers the dusting of freckles along the rim of her nose that he can finally make out again.

He turns in his seat and squares himself to face her. She’s rigid. “Maka,” he says slowly. “Do you think I cheated on you with Blair?”

She swallows thickly. _Are her eyes wet?_  He hates himself a little more because her eyes are wet and please tell him she’s invested in waterproof mascara. 

"I know you cheated on me with Blair," she manages after a moment, and the shiver in her voice has the hair standing up on his arms. He feels seventeen again and not at all twenty four, and he’s watching her walk out on him all over again. "I saw pictures."

His mouth is dry but his throat is on fire and he swallows thickly. “White hair?” 

She nods, nose and lips quivering. Her fingers bunch up the napkin that she’s shredding in her hands.

His hands are shaking too when he slides them over hers. He knows what a foul cheating is to her, knows how her father tore apart her family with too many affairs. He knows that she missed her mother in high school and he definitely remembered the way she clicked her tongue at couples passing by in the hallway. 

He’s a little offended when she shies away from his touch and her eyes flare up again but he tries to understand and let it be. He’s so close. He didn’t show up with intentions of fixing things with the girl who saved him once and hung him out to dry but he’s  _so close_.

He can taste her perfume. 

"Blair’s my sister in law now, you know," he mumbles, fingers drumming on the table by hers. Her pinkie twitches. Her shoulders squirm. "And she was sleeping with my brother when he was in college."

He can’t look at her, because his own heart is slamming in his chest and he’s afraid she doesn’t believe him. He can’t explain the devastation he feels at her lack of trust, because he’d never given her a reason not to trust him. He played piano for her, walked her to class, held her hand during the court dates and on empty Mother’s Days, and none of it had been to get into her pants. 

He never even got into her pants. He kind of hates the term. He likes to think he would’ve made love to her and all of the sappy shit that Tsubaki used to croon  to her.

"… I only met your brother once," she breathes, and her shoulders are shuddering and she has the oddest, saddest smile. Her pinkie brushes against his thumb and his entire arm surges with a burning heat. "You never talked about him."

He’s probably a little tipsy, and that’s why he’s having this conversation with her.

"Blair met him more than once," he admits, and then he’s laughing, and she’s laughing, and Liz and Patty are sending them confused (and then soon after proud) stares. Black Star still hasn’t noticed he’s there and that’s okay, that’s more than okay, because Maka’s laughing and Maka is crying and she’s sliding her hand onto his, the way it’s supposed to be.

He’s definitely tipsy, he decides, when he leans over and brushes his mouth against her ear. Her hair tickles his cheek and the heat of her blush radiates off of her. And then he’s whispering to her about how he didn’t sleep with any one in high school because he was waiting for her to be ready, that he never would’ve slept with anyone but her, and that she looks lovely,  _really lovely_ , and could she maybe let him stay?

And she squeezes his hand and shakes her head, and he doesn’t mind at all that there are clear tears streaking down her face. He’s glad she wore waterproof eyeliner, too. And she’s smiling, face pink.

He doesn’t even shout when she punches him in the arm. And she doesn’t even shout when he kisses her fingers, but they both shout when Black Star does finally notice them and drags them both into a bone crushing bear hug. 


End file.
